Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat weblog has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech and privacy/confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is David Brophy, Birgit Clark, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof. You're welcome to read, post comments and participate in our community. You can email the Kats here

For the half-year to 30 June 2015, the IPKat's regular team is supplemented by contributions from guest bloggers Suleman Ali, Tom Ohta and Valentina Torelli.

Regular round-ups of the previous week's blogposts are kindly compiled by Alberto Bellan.

Monday, 9 May 2011

Those that regularly read this blog will know that this particular Kat is especially fond of numbers – statistics, figures, tables, averages and valuations amongst other things (readers may also be interested to note that he has a very well-thumbed and dog-eared thesaurus lying close to his keyboard. ‘Statistics’ is found in section 86…) fill him with unbridled joy. It is therefore with some interest that the Kat notes the publication of the sixth annual BrandZ (do you see what they did there?) Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands.

Speaking of statistics, the report weighs in at 106 pages (including what would traditionally be considered to be covers) of text and pictures (with emphasis on the latter) with a fair smattering of tables and even the occasional graph. As one might expect from its title, the report is concerned with the classification and valuation of the world’s most valuable global brands. It explains (at p.102) that “The dollar value of each brand in the ranking is the sum of all future earnings that brand is forecast to generate, discounted to a present-day value.” While to the uneducated this may simply appear to be speculation and economic hocus-pocus, the report tells us otherwise with a (very) brief summary of its methodology (also on p.102). Thus, brand value is calculated in three steps: (1) Branded Earnings – What proportion of a company’s earnings is generated “under the banner of the brand”? – (2) Brand Contribution – “How much of these branded earnings are generated due to the brand’s close bond with its customers?” – and (3) Brand Multiple – “What is the growth potential of the brand-driven earnings?”

The result is, according to the opening pages of the report: “the only ranking grounded in both quantitative consumer research and in-depth financial analysis.” So there you have it: no crystal balls were harmed in the making of these valuations... And so on to the statistics proper:

The big winners in terms of brand growth over the past year are “facebook”, with a 246% increase in “brand value” over 2010 levels, and Chinese brand “Baidu” with a 141% increase. “Apple” has wrested the top spot from “Google” with an 84% increase in value to $153,285 million, which (as the report will tell you) is just a little more than the GDP of Peru. Big losers over the past 12 months are “Bank of America” with a 43% drop over 2010 values to $9,358 million, and “Nintendo” and “Santander”, both with a 37% drop in value (to $11,147 million and $11,363 million respectively) – readers will be pacified by noting that “Nintendo” and “Santander” are still worth more than the GDP of Mozambique based on 2010 IMF estimates, and that “Bank of America” is only marginally behind the GDP of Mauritius (again based on 2010 IMF figures).

Most interesting, to this Kat at least, are the comparisons both between and within certain sectors. Therefore, whereas technology in general grew by 18% in brand value, the telecoms sector was relatively stagnant, with only 3 of the top 10 brands in the survey showing any movement at all (and then one of these was down). In soft drinks, the Diet Coke/Coke Light brand overtook Pepsi as the number 2 brand with a 3% increase in brand value.

The full report can be found here (hefty .pdf alert), or by following some of the links above. There goes another Monday afternoon…

The IPKat's sidebar contents

Want to complain?If you feel that you have been unfairly prevented from posting a comment on one of this weblog's features, here's what you can do about it

The IPKat's cousins: some IP-friendly blogs for youThe IPKat lists his 'family' of IP blogs, some of which focus on specific rights, geographical zones, markets or interests

How many page-views?See how many times the pages of the IPKat weblog have been purr-viewed

The Kat that tweetsToo short to blog? Some news and views are still worth airing, thanks to Twitter

Want to receive the IPKat weblog by email?You can get each post, or a digest, sent direct to your favourite mailbox

Not just any old IPKatEvery so often, this feline creeps into the limelight

The IPKat's RSS feeding arrangementsFeedburner and all those other things ...

What you've been sayingHere are the most recent readers' comments on the IPKat's posts

The IPKat's Greatest Hits!Here are the five posts on the IPKat's weblog that have received the most attention from readers over the past 30 days

Has the Kat got your tongue?Some translation facilities for readers whose first language is not English, or who are just plain masochistic

Creative Commons licenceYou too can make use of this blog's contents, if you follow the rules

The IPKat ArchiveAncient posts, going back to June 2003

Want to complain?

If you have posted a comment to one of our blogposts and it hasn't appeared, it may be because it doesn't match our criteria for moderation -- essentially that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should be relevant to the blogpost on which they purport to comment.

If you feel that your comment should have been moderated, please email the IPKat at theipkat@gmail.com and let him know, since it may be that your comment has been misdirected into the Blogger software's Spam file.

In the event that there has been no software malfunction and that your post has been rejected, if you want to appeal against this decision please contact either (i) Dr Danny Friedmann of theIP Dragonweblog (ipdragon@gmail.com) or (ii) Professor Dennis Crouch of the Patently-O weblog (dcrouch@patentlyo.com). Danny or Dennis will review your complaint, preserving the confidentiality of your identity and will let both you and us know whether your complaint is justified.

If your complaint relates to bias or distortion, the IPKat suggests that you contact him initially, bearing in mind that he and Merpel are generally willing to host pieces by guest contributors even when their opinions are at odds with those of this blog's contributors.